PA Farm Show butter sculpture by Conshohocken sculptor unveiled

Jim Victor and his team spent 12 days bundled in winter clothes and cramped in a 50-degree refrigerator building the 2013 PA Farm Show butter sculpture.

But this was nothing new. The owner of Conshohocken’s Jim Victor Food Sculpture and his wife, Marie Pelton, have been called upon more than 10 times to build the artistic centerpiece of the annual agricultural show.

This year’s nearly 1,000-pound creation was designed by Pelton to celebrate the major areas of commerce and agriculture in Pennsylvania, which also is the theme of the show this year, said Harold Shaulis, the board of directors of the Pennsylvania Dairy Promotion Program.

The PA Preferred partnership between the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and agricultural producers works to support products made in the state.

Land O’Lakes donated the butter, said Victor.

“It’s waste butter that they can’t use or sell,” he said.

After the Farm Show, the butter from the sculpture will be taken to a nearby farm and added to a methane digester. The digester will capture the methane gas as the butter decomposes and burn it to make electricity.

“So the butter is used three times” when it would have been thrown out, Victor said.